AMERICA'S AEROPLANE FIASCO

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 97, 18 January 1919, Page 3

AMERICA'S AEROPLANE FIASCO

WAR BOAST THAT WAS NOT FULFILLED

A DAMAGING REPORT When the United States entered the war, the public was given to understand that American- ingenuity,-'invention, and industrial capacity would place in the war zone an overwhelming ■■ avalanche of aircraft. This boast was not fulfilled. The people of the United States naturally wanted to know why, and a Commission of Inquiry was therefore 6et up to go into the causes of the failure, and duly reported. The report was a scathing indictment. Said the "San Francisco Chronicle":—

"It will do no harm to summarise the wretched story of brag and blunder which characterised our attempts to produce aircraft during our first year of war. The, authority for the statements is the report of the Senate Committee on Military. Affairs, based on evidence taken by a 6ub-committee of three Democratic and two Republican Senators. We declared war on April 6, 1917.' On, June 8 it was authoritatively announced that a great fleet of ■ 25,000 airplanes was to be created at once, which would of themselves win the war months before an effective army could be put in Europe. On August 22, 1918, the, date of the report, there was not one American plane in use in Europe and but a trifling number—sixty-nine, if we remember the testimony , correctly—of British planes made in America. On August 8, 1918, C. W. Nash, assistant to the director jn charge .of engineering (under the reorganisation) testified that we should do well if we delivered 10,000 American planes by July, 1919.

Millions Wasted. "In the meantime 640,000,000 dollars U128,000,OW>) had been thrown to the birds, by the most incompetent, intriguing, quarrelsome, big-headed and .pigheaded batch Of nincompoops that ever infested even a- Government bureau this sido of'Petrograd. - This is not-the language of- the committee, but it is justi-, tied by the evidence, and it doubtless would be endorsed in private conversation by' every member of the committee. We are, -and 'for some months have been, delivering 'planes in Europe in important numbers, but- they are foreign 'planes made strictly from foreign drawings. When our bureaucrats tried to "improve" them the resulting machine .had to be scrapped. There was 6,000,000 dollars worth in one lot. These people began by assuming that without, any experience they know more, about ajroplaues than those who had been.making and .fighting them'for two years.' And. they etiid that they were going to make better 'planes, than had before been seen. After waiting a year and wasting 640,000,000 dollars («Er28,OO!),000), we are doing what we should have done in the iirst placemake tested machines while trying to produce better. Aeroplanes are being improved with great rapidity, and after experience Americans can donbtless make, thoir contribution: The absurdity of our bragging is obvious. It is not too much to say that no important machine of any kind ever was put on the market in permanent form as first designed. To suppose that a machine devised by engineers with no aviation experience would work until changed should have been known to be absurd even by CreeS. Most of tho, lives lost-at our training posts are due- to attempts to make the work of amateurs go. i'or any radically new machine-it-'is necessary, to plan for a year between the delivery of the first' design an deven a fairly satisfactory 'plane. .

-, "Nor could we ever expect to turn out exact replicas of foreign machines without monMiß of ■ preparation. To "begin with—and there may be 2000 drawings for a largo machine—all Continental drawings are in metric measurements. Everyone of them has to be redrawn and tha measurements translated into our measures before our workmen can use them. That, however, is a trifle.. European ''planes-are largely hand work. American methods of quantity production are to make a special tool for-finish-ing each part, and do the work with unskilled.laoour. Consequently -we'are without the skilled labour to build in the.European way, and getting the tools drove the manufacturers crazy. Changej of design.,were continuous, and evury change made necessary sci-apping of old tools . and design and production of. new tools. And in the end, tools, ; designs arid productions had to be . sorapped. And all tho timo we were bragging about the prodigious number of 'planes, we were building. We have made, a good many 'planes, but they are training 'planes, which are comparatively simple things. The only peopled any experience we had in this country were the manufacturers and-fly-era of - the, little exhibition 'planes, with which we wore familiar,: and' they, in spite of urgent applications, were contemptuously turned away. Their plants were small, and nothing would do but to enlist' the.big.automobile plants, or people who had the money to build them, but who did not know a thing about airplanes. ' . •'

"There are several' types of training 'planes,.and at least three distinct types of service 'planes—for- observation and photographing, for combat and for bombing. . And their construction is necessarily very-different. Our people set out to build a 'plane, fit .for all these uees,' arid got one fit for none of them. Training 'planes are of different kinds. It is not desired to kill the students and so they begin on • a 'plane which will go, but can by no possibility be got to leave the ground. All the beginner lias to do is to sit in his machine and learn to work the. controls.' They call these machines "penguins," and during the committee's investigation there were put out a lot of pictures of penguins so labelled as to make the public believe that they were American machines with which our boys were slaughtering Germans ■in France. The next step is a machine so stable that a student whose mental and physical qualification warrant the belief that he could ever become an-aviator, could take the'air without the least danger. From that they are given machines harder and harder to manage, until at last they are trusted ■with the 'planes actually used in warfare. And many a good man has lost his life in experimenting with Americnn "improvements" on standard machines. An observation machine is one of some size reasonably fast, with very slight means of defence, but equipped with photographic apparatus which the observer manipulates. It does not need a "oßiling"—that is, the ability to attain a high altitude—and relies for protect tion on accompanying combat machines, These are high-powered monoplanes, capable of operating at very high altitudes and manoeuvre like lightning any side up. They are armed with modern guns and with all other possible means of offensive or defence which do not add too much weight. The bombing liiachine is a powerful biplane or tnplane with a low "ceiling" and capable of carrying loads of many tons.

"This brief discipline should give some idea of the tremendous undertaking which the authorities said the great ana only American peoplo wore going to accomplish right awny quick nil out of their own heads and lick the Huns long before we could even get an army to Prance. As it hue turned out after a year and a half, we have over 2,000,000 soldiers in France, but no American airplnnes. What we have done in the air Service is to train eoino thousands of American aviators, many of whom are (jetting their experience, winning their laurels, and some of them losing their live?, actually fighting Germans. But they are not flying the American machines made in America. We could put more American fliers in the air if more machines could be got from any source. A fair equipment is two machines for eacli flier and the equivalent of one machine in spare parts. And the nverage cojt of the machines completely equipped is probably 10,000 dollars. The strain on the machines is tremendous and the wear and tear correspondingly great. They have to be continually replaced, as they can be iised but a short time. We have ulso developed a good motor. The official etory of a couple of supermen locked up in a room with drawing materials to produce the best motor ever overnight, and they did it, was a myth. The development of the Lfbeity motor was a work of many months and a good many trials

imd mnny people running back over' years before a Liberty motor, was ever thought of. Tho motor for an airplane is a very different thing from the in-ternal-combustion motors with which we are familiar. The 400-horse-power Liberty motor woighs about 80D pounds, or two pounds to the horse-power. An ordinary automobile' motor will weigh probably ten pounds to the horse-power, and a motor for farm or other heavy work probably thirty pounds to the horsepower, 'in either case the weight , would be prohibitive for an airplane A motor of two pounds to tho horse-power can be built to stand the sfn-ains of Hying, but like other parts of the airplane, it do»s not tako much of a jolt to smash them. They" are easily put out of commission, which e.rplains the necessity of two planes to the flier, great quantitiss of spare narts, the short life of the pliwies at best, and the necessity of constant renewals. The design of a motor for air service involves the minutest calculation of strains, experience with the different alloys of metals, and no end of other things, and numerous trials to assure that no mistake has been made. And tho same is true of every other part ot the airplane.

The Liberty Motor, "Having finally produced a good motor, the thing was that it should go on to every machine, but when they put the motor on the planes they were making the planes went to pieces. They were not built for so rnu.cli power. Presumably that wns the reason for the continual changes \jf design of the planes they were trying to make, with their awful cost and delays. The explanation of that is simgle.. When the war broke out 150 horse-power was large for the engine of an airplane. When we entered they ihad got up to 220 or 240 horsepower and were increasing all the time. Wβ are shipping to our associated nations all the Liberty motors we can produce, not, necessarily, because we can build better motors than others, but because they are building more powerful planes and we have a good motor developed to fit. them. They take the Liberty motor and build the plane around it, calculated to withstand the precise strains which thie particular ■motor produces. "All our blunders are the result oi the pig-headednesS| of the men in our organisation. Our associates promptly Bent over, not only drawings, but their best men . and experienced flyers. They were received with courtesy, but almost no use made of them.. Our automobile onjinoors were sure that they knew it all.

i "The evidence shows that pull was all-power?ul in the/aircraft service, and that gross profiteering was attempted, often successfully, by some manufacturers. The cases of a few individuals are under consideration l>v the Department of Justice through the commission of which former Justice Hii<rhee"is at the head. In duo time we shall get that report, but apparently it was not illicit gain or the desire for it which caused our air plan fiasco, but the utter looseness of organisation and impossibility of fixing rffiDonsibility amone a great number of officials, 6ome of them of nrovwl ffrent competence -in the fields of. their experience, but almost wholly ignorant of. aeronautics, manv of them jncompe- ' tent, and nearly all of them temperamentally nnfilj to organise or operatn a busings organisation of any kind./ Responsibility is now concentrated because the two men in charpre of design nnd production are determined to work together and not at cross purnoso. fl'rtJi two pig-headed men it would he as bnd as ever. The cause of the fearful show which ire made of ourselves in thn airnlflne business for a your and a half ivns in thn organisation and the men within it. The ultimate blame, ■'therefore, ve.sU entirely on the authority which created the organisation, aptiointod the men in it, continued it and ttipm until forced to change by Congressional pressure nnd an indignant public nuinion and sought to justify or excuse it in his testimony before tho investigating committee. Whore the power rests there rests also tho responsibility."